When we returned, the penitent demolishers had stoked up the stoves and brewed us scalding tea with rum. The next day Mirek and I were taken farther up the line; we trudged ahead to examine the poles. Towards evening Mirek stated: ‘We’re approaching a tunnel. It’s near the border. I’ll be guarded by a dolt of a sentry. You, Rozmarýnka, keep your mouth shut. Leave the talking to me. With your accent and the present spy hysteria, he’s sure to take you for an agent. The local police’ll be as daft as they were in Švejk’s day. We’ll be detained for days answering idiotic questions, like Švejk was when he got lost in these parts.’
We could see the entrance to the tunnel. The sentry trained his rifle on us. The fact that he was stamping his feet to keep warm and his hands were shaking with the cold added a touch of piquancy, like lemon rind to sweet Vermouth. He lowered his rifle to demand our passes. Delighted at the unexpected encounter with human flesh and blood, he prolonged the interview as long as he could. He examined our documents with slow thoroughness, and stirred the contents of our rucksacks. His efforts to draw me into a discussion on the hazards of the track cost me several warning kicks on the ankle from Mirek’s hefty snow boots. At last, with his mind on supper and our schedule, Mirek dragged me away, through the tunnel and along the track to a small station where we were to catch a train to České Budějovice. The station master welcomed us with the announcement that our train was three-quarters of an hour overdue. As our hot baths and hot supper receded further into the future, Mirek grumbled: ‘We’ll have to electrify the bloody timetables as well!’
He soon recovered his good humour and drew the tattered Švejk out of his rucksack. ‘Here’s the bit I was telling you about. Švejk has been apprehended by Flanderka, the local constable, who is convinced that he’s a Russian spy. Here’s an example of the cross-examination.
*
‘“Flanderka, do you know how to take photographs?”
“Yes, I do,”
“Then why don’t you carry a camera with you?”
“Because I haven’t got one,” came the clear and frank reply.
“And had you had one, would you have taken photographs?” asked the sergeant.
“If pigs had wings,” replied Švejk, simply, and he unflinchingly bore the scrutiny of the sergeant whose head was aching so badly that he could think of no better question than “Is it difficult to photograph a station?”
“It’s easier than anything else,” answered Švejk, “Because it stays put in one place and you don’t have to keep telling it to smile nicely….”
The sergeant wrote down: “Among other things during my cross-examination he admitted that he knew how to take photographs and he liked stations best. It is true no camera was found on him but it can be presumed that he has hidden it somewhere and that he doesn’t cany it on him so as to divert attention away from himself, which is supported by his confession that he would photograph if he had a camera … It is only thanks to the fact that he did not have a camera handy that no photographs were found on him.”’
*
The more I knew the Czechs, the more I understood the attraction of Švejk. Ševejk is a symbol of the moral victory of the underdog over the tyrant. His very acceptance of fate becomes a form of passive resistance. Though outwardly submissive, he retains the inner right to consign his superior to hell. His loquaciousness breaks his opponent’s spirit; his imperturbability renders him impotent. In every encounter Švejk makes authority look ridiculous, which removes the sting from subordination.
Ševejk holds out the hope that astuteness disguised as stupidity and evasiveness combined with mockery will eventually erode the edifice of power.
*
My next taste of track life took me to Slovakia, to a section of the Žilina-Spišská Nová Ves line, where work was still at the initial back-breaking stage. Armed with a pot of yellow paint and a brush, Mirek and Franta and I plodded along the track, measuring out the future poles, and painting them on the rails.
‘As the youngest, in experience if not in years, it’s your job to carry the rucksacks,’ Mirek stated.
‘But they’re heavy,’ I protested.
‘Damn it! Are you in favour of equality, or aren’t you?’ he demanded. ‘You are? Well, then, you can’t complain. Crucifix, that’s women all over; they want it all ways!’
I said no more and meekly loaded myself with our belongings. After the third stretch, Mirek relented. He took them from me, saying:
‘We’ll work by rota.’ He offered me a lump of raw bacon fat on the end of his pocket knife accompanied by a draught of hot grog from a bottle wrapped in asbestos. I choked and my eyes watered.
‘Knocks the wind out of you, doesn’t it?’ Mirek laughed. ‘In the words of the dissolute sailor: Grog should be so strong that if someone falls overboard he can swim the Channel. After weak grog, he’d drown like a kitten.’
Considering the distance we were from the sea, I thought Mirek could have followed a more moderate recipe. For a long time I felt as though I were carrying a lighted torch inside me.
The station master referred to his timetable. ‘By regulation you can’t leave here until ten minutes after a train has passed through and you must be back fifteen minutes before a train is due. To that, we must add the time you’ll need in the tunnel. I haven’t such a long interval. I shall be obliged to hold up the goods train for you.’
‘Here, Rozmarýnka, take the plan and read out the distances, and Gawd help you if you make a mistake. It’s a pig of a job to drive a fixture into a tunnel wall. If anything has to be done twice, you’ll face lynching.’
With these cheering words, Mirek thrust the crumpled, paint-splotched plan into my hand. Our powerful lamp cut a chunk out of the darkness of the tunnel; the metallic twang of the steel tape against the rails sounded like off-stage thunder. The higher pitch of our voices reflected a slight doubt that the station master would indeed detain the goods train.
Without any warning a sheet of sound blasted our brains like the shelling of Portsmouth Harbour, Cup Final victory and Beethoven’s Ninth rolled into one. Sparks rent the darkness and smoke filled our noses and throats like hot, sooty cotton wool, as a gargantuan combination of steel and power hurtled towards us. This violent onslaught on all the senses produced a moment of sheer terror. We pressed ourselves into an alcove, and emerged afterwards as black as the Kentucky Minstrels and as subdued as choirboys.
‘The express was a little item that escaped the station master’s notice,’ remarked Franta with a shaky laugh.
‘All in a day’s work!’ commented Mirek. He took a swig of the dissolute sailor’s grog and passed the flask to us.
Never had life seemed sweeter.
Chapter 11
The sweetness soon evaporated back at the office. News had got around of an official volte face on the subject of diplomas.
‘Changing their bloody minds again,’ Mirek grumbled. ‘When the universities were re-opened after the war, they crammed them to overflowing to catch up on six years of ignorance. By 1948 education was a handicap. If your father was a drunken navvy who couldn’t sign his name and your mother a whore, and you just about knew which end of a broom sweeps the road, you stood the optimal chance of promotion. If you’d gone farther than the senior elementary, you were a bloody intellectual conspiring to upset the political applecart. Seventy per cent of our top Johnnies haven’t even been to secondary school, though a few have got phoney degrees in Marxism-Leninism. Now it’s dawned on them that we won’t attain a state of abundance by digging faster with our bare hands: we gotta have scientific and technological progress. But if a Czech wants to scratch his left ear, he does it with his right hand behind the back of his neck; combine that with the present habit of aping the Russians on the swings and roundabouts, and you can see that this is going to take a heck of a long time. Now, on top of that, they’ve decided that without a bloody bumashka* people can’t go on doing the job they’ve been doing for years and know like their own boo
ts. All us projektants† who’ve only been to the secondary tech have got to sign on for five years of extramural drudgery to get a degree if we want to hang on to our jobs.’
A thoughtful gloom settled on the office.
‘Keeping the population busy could be one way of keeping them out of mischief,’ Mirek mused. ‘It’ll be interesting to see the results. Either alcoholism, crime and adultery will decline for sheer lack of time or we shall all be driven to drink and fornication out of pure despair, and the suicide rate of those who can’t stand the pace will rise.’
A works crash course in mathematics, mechanics, physics and chemistry was organized for those who lacked even basic qualifications. The degree of concentration required to follow yard-long equations at six a.m. proved beyond me. When the examination days were announced I judiciously went sick and applied for a postponement. This was repeated several times. Eventually, on the strength of a rubber stamp and a signed statement by Sláva that I attended the course and would undoubtedly have passed the examination had I not been prevented by illness from taking it, I stepped up onto the next rung. I was now a fully-fledged, if technically undernourished, designer. I had no compunction about this deceit. To my mind, the effort of remaining upright with both eyes open between six and seven in the morning three times a week for several months deserved some recompense. As regards material reward, my salary leapt by nearly a third.
My complacency was short-lived. One day the door burst open and a short, stringy apparition in a battered leather windcheater, bristling with at least three days’ whiskers and bottled indignation, appeared before us, bawling: ‘Which bloody stupid ox is Kav?’
‘Crucifix,’ whispered Mirek. ‘Old Švabinský. He’s the assembly foreman from the Kolín-Pardubice section we’ve been working on. What’s up, mate?’
‘Up? The ruddy arms are up, that’s what! Up without a check, if you ask me, though what the hell you bloody boffins do all the time, Gawd only knows. Some straw-stuffed idiot in your circus can’t count. Over a metre too long they are in one section. They oughta come down and go for salvage, except that my men can’t hang about doing nothing while a new lot are provided. They’ve wasted enough time as it is. And would’ve wasted more, if I hadn’t had a brainwave. Brilliant it was, but I ain’t paid for fantasy; I’m not a stinking designer. I had one hell of a job shortening the carrier cable and mucking about with contact wire fixtures. So which of you gawping bastards is Kav?’
I emerged from behind my drawing-board: ‘I — I am.’
“Ha, not an ox, a cow!’
He advanced, exhaling fire and brimstone. Mirek called out: ‘Calm down, Cockroach, it’s Rozmarýnka’s first mistake; she probably counted in the rent.’
The Cockroach cast an appreciative eye over the cow. ‘You must be that foreign bird the boys was talking about.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Actually there was only about five arms that was too long but we like to put these pen-pushers in their place once in a while.’ He lowered his voice still further: “You doing anything this evening?’
I hesitated. The ethics of my position as a grass widow ruled out dates; but as insurance against future slips it seemed prudent to gain the Cockroach as an ally. I replied warily that I wasn’t doing anything in particular.
‘Meet you outside the Tatran at eight?’
I nodded. He strolled out, growling for effect: ‘Well, don’t let it happen again.’
The Cockroach had put a few under his belt before turning up for our date. It was an evening devoted to the art of fencing. I foiled the Cockroach’s advances as tactfully as I could. Whenever his wandering hands under the table became too persistent, I jumped up and suggested dancing. When the crush on the dance floor led to too many liberties, I dragged him resolutely back to the table. He took my defence tactics in good part. I got home at one in the morning feeling I had more than atoned for five over-long arms.
*
Altruism is a short-term virtue. Now that the temporary exigency had become a permanent emergency, the ladies of our house withdrew their assistance. I was therefore obliged to give up my evening lessons. Without my extra earnings there was no way of paying the rent for our luxury flat. The only solution was to exchange it for a smaller one.
I went to the agency that mediated such exchanges (which then had to be approved by the respective National Committees). No sooner had I paid the fee than I was invited for coffee by Dr Gertruda Sekaninová-Čakrtová1 who lived in the flat above us. She was a Jewess of great beauty and intellect who had survived the 1948 purges as a Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. Apart from her indisputable merits, her strongest card was her dead husband. To be the widow of a war hero was the soundest alibi in the early fifties.
Truda’s friendliness towards me had not changed after Pavel’s detention. In this respect she was more courageous than other Party friends whose lines had gone dead when Pavel was arrested. Truda announced that she had arranged for me to exchange my flat with a Foreign Ministry official. My request to see the flat before making a decision surprised her. However, she telephoned for an appointment.
The official’s flat was in the Špejchar district. Even if climbing five flights of stairs had not rendered me speechless, I wouldn’t have found words to express my disappointment. The flat faced north and overlooked a busy thoroughfare; it consisted of two tiny rooms and a bathroom, and a kitchen recess. I sidled towards the radiator. It was cold. As the sun never reached the rooms, the flat would never be warm. No wonder the official wanted to vacate it.
I felt confident I could do better through the agency. The official, however, informed me that his Ministry and our two National Committees had already sanctioned the exchange.
‘So I have no choice! This is a fait accompli!’ I cried.
The official said nothing, but I could read his thoughts: he was in a strong position; I was on weak ground.
On Monday morning I joined the queue outside the office of the chief housing manager for the City of Prague. After a three-and-a-half-hour wait, I was admitted.
‘Yes,’ barked the bulky individual behind the desk. ‘What do you want?’
I glanced at my watch. Twelve o’clock. The man was hungry. He was also goaded to a high pitch of irritation by the futility of his job. The housing plan was behind schedule; every day he faced mobs of irate, unhoused citizens who would remain irate and unhoused for the next decade or so. He glared at me with bulging, bloodshot eyes. I was backing a 100:1 loser.
‘I wish to register a protest,’ I announced with as much firmness as I could muster.
‘Oh, you do?’ The weight of sarcasm would have crushed a dinosaur. Presumably no one ever went there with any other purpose.
‘Yes, I’m being forced to exchange a large, luxurious, sunny, three-and-a-half roomed, centrally heated flat in a quiet villa for a small, miserable, sunless, two-roomed flatlet on a busy arterial road. As the local authorities have given their blessing to this unnatural bargain without my consent, I have been compelled to go over their heads and request you to abrogate the negotiations.’
The bulldog leaned across the table, bared its fangs and demanded icily: ‘And who, may I ask, is forcing your hand in this peculiar manner?’
‘Dr — an official at the Foreign Ministry.’
‘How many persons occupy your large, luxurious, sunny flat, madam?’
‘Temporarily, one adult and two children. That’s why —’
The word temporary intrigues me, ‘cut in the bulldog. ‘Your name, madam?’
‘Kavanová.’
‘Not the wife of that traitor Pavel Kavan?’
‘No, I mean yes. That is I am his wife, but he’s not a traitor. He got into the trial by mistake.’
The ulcerated housing manager leapt to his feet. ‘You have been offered a two-roomed flat in Prague, and yet you come to me to complain! You may consider yourself fortunate, madam. We are sending the likes of you out of the capital to the border regions.’ His bulging eyes rolled men
acingly. ‘Now, get out of here before I accede to your request and intercede in your case. I have a plentiful stock of sunless, one-room shacks in the Šumava forests, from which you may take your choice and a list as long as Wenceslas Square of citizens who will be grateful to occupy your Dr What’shisname’s two rooms.’
I withdrew. The hubbub of the Špejchar crossroads was preferable to the solitude of the Šumava forest.
As I had anticipated, the boys’ health deteriorated in our new surroundings. The air in the centre of Prague was heavy with dust. There was no garden to play in. The flat was cold at its warmest. As the final stroke of misery, we had to endure six weeks without heating in the middle of a Siberian winter because the concierge had forgotten to order winter stocks of coal in the summer. Not a germ avoided us. On top of the complete set of children’s diseases, the boys were afflicted with bouts of septic tonsilitis, running ear and bronchitis. They were suffering from vitamin and protein deficiency. Fruit, vegetables, butter, meat, fish, milk and eggs were in short supply. But even when these foods reached the market, most of them were beyond my means. After a pay rise and reduction in rent, my income still barely covered essentials. (The cost of living was geared to two incomes per family.) I walked past expensive oranges and lemons with tears in my eyes. Many of the cheaper wholesome foods eluded us too. These were usually delivered to the shops during the day when I was at work and unlike most employed women I had no babička (granny) to queue for us. My heart bled to see the boys paying with their health for the injustice perpetrated on their father. I gave them the best of what little I procured, while my own diet consisted of bread and dripping, potatoes and salami.
The boys accepted our penury stoically. They bore hours of loneliness on a sick bed uncomplainingly. I could not afford to take time off. When they were ill Mr Němec sometimes allowed me to go home at lunch time so that I could give them a quick meal. Otherwise, all I could do for them was to phone for short chats and to remind them to take their medicines.
Love and Freedom Page 16